U. S. regulators turn up heat on online pharmacy
A mysterious RCMP raid, a secret court file and the latest in a string of multimillion- dollar convictions against U. S. doctors for buying its drugs have thrust a Canadian cross- border pharmacy back into the legal spotlight.
The Mounties’ recent search of Canada Drugs Ltd. offices comes two years after U. S. authorities accused the Winnipeg firm of organizing a shipment of fake cancer drugs south of the border.
The bogus Avastin affair continues to reverberate, as the latest in a string of physicians prosecuted for buying it from Canada Drugs was convicted this month. Robert Walker, a Missouri oncologist, paid $ 2 million in fines and restitution.
Earlier, U. S. regulators prosecuted one of Canada Drugs’ American associates for his part, seizing $ 4.5 million in land, cash and an Aston Martin sports car, calling the Montana resident a “predatory opportunist.”
U. S. authorities have never taken legal action against the Canadian company or its low- profile owner, Kris Thorkelson.
But it’s almost certain the raid on Canada Drugs’ premises last month stemmed from the cancerdrug affair, said Jim Dahl, a retired assistant director of the U. S. Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) criminal investigations unit.
“Their entire business model ... is in violation of U. S. law,” said Dahl.
It wouldn’t be the first time American officials have pursued a Manitoba- based Internet pharmacist, he noted.
Andrew Strempler, who sold his RxNorth to Thorkelson, was jailed in 2013 for four years for marketing unapproved and allegedly counterfeit drugs to Americans.
The RCMP investigation is the latest twist for a surprising boom- and- bust industry that emerged on the Prairies in the early 2000s.
By the middle of the past decade, Internet pharmacies based largely in Manitoba earned hundreds of millions a year, selling cheaper products to Americans, who face the world’s highest prices for prescription drugs.
From the start, the mail- order businesses were in the FDA’s sights, accused of exporting drugs that weren’t U. S.- approved, though they were often the same medications made by the same companies.
The brand- name pharmaceutical industry — worried about being undercut in the world’s biggest drug market — has also been a strong foe.
The Internet business serves a million Americans annually, and boasts a “perfect safety record,” said Tim Smith, spokesman for the Canadian International Pharmacy Association.
But as well as selling online to individual patients, Canada Drugs markets cancer and other drugs wholesale to American physicians at cut- rate prices. That seems to be the source of most of its troubles.
Specifically, it began trading in sensitive “injectable” drugs, heightening FDA concerns. The agency revealed in 2012 a counterfeit shipment of injectable Avastin had reached numerous U. S. doctors’ offices. It turned out the drugs, originating in Turkey, contained no active ingredient.
American prosecutors allege Canada Drugs was at the centre of it all.